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Old 01-26-2009, 02:57 PM   #6 (permalink)
BlackGSD
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Eastern Washington
Posts: 7,526
Default Re: Give your dog a Job!

Jobs that my dogs have had:

Pulling a wagon either with a person in it, or helping with yard work. (I load up the wagon with leaves, grass clippings, branches ect... and the dog hauls the wagon to the "dumping spot".

Picking up dropped laundry.

Finding/fetching the remote.

Delivering tools and/or notes/mail or packaged food (like chips, candy bars, ect...)to someone else in the house.

Carrying in the mail from the mail box. (Mail box is about 1/10th or more of a mile from the house. So we walk out there then the dog carries it to the house.)

Finding the cat. (The cat was NOT allowed to be loose in the house when I was asleep or gone, and would HIDE when she knew I was going somewhere, so the dogs job was to "find the cat". MUCH faster than having to do it myself!)

Bring the kitchen trash can in from outside after I dumped it into the big outside can. The dog made this one up on her own. One day she just took the can away from me and took it to the house. So from then on I just let her do it everytime.

One of Wranglers jobs is to "check for snakes". I HATE it when I go in a stall to clean or put feed in it before I put the horses in the stall and there is a 3 foot snake in the stall! SO I stand at the door and say "Check for snakes". He checks the whole stall and if he finds one he barks at it. If there is no snake, he comes to me and looks at me with his "there aren't any" look. (These are non-poisoness snakes but I STILL don't want to step on one that is under the straw!)

When we were raising game birds here I had a REAL problem with the human males not latching the gates. There were CONSTANTLY loose birds. (Mostly Ring neck Pheasants and Bobwhite Quail.) Wranglers job was to catch the birds and bring them to me. If they were young pheasants or quail, he would deliver then to hand, if they were adult pheasants he would pin them to the groud until I could get to them and pick them up. (He only weighed 35 lbs, a live adult pheasant was too hard to carry.) He NEVER injured a bird let alone kill one even though he is NOT a "bird dog" breed.

Keep the cattle from trying to kill me when I feed. (We have had some that are VERY nasty and would bash the fence with their heads. Getting bitten on the nose a time or 2 stopped that cr@p and after than as long as the dogs were standing there the cows behaved!)

Helping put the goats away. (I let them run loose during the day and the dogs help put them away in the evening.) Diva also helps if I have a calf "escape". Either she helps me or she gets them back in on her own.

Another job they have is killing gophers.
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Tracy

Siren vom Banach { Sable female GSD 3-20-08}

R.I.P. Wrangler male ACD/Aussie mix. 9-29-99 to8-29-11.
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